CHAPTER 85: FeastYears 145-146Killcount: 78When we left off, a very powerful forgotten beast had just survived our greatest contraption, only to kill itself. While it's easy to focus on the anticlimatic fate of Om Liceugly the Fatal Grave, I'd like to direct your attention to the cheetah east of the trap. This cheetah (let's call her Shirley) is a cub born and raised in the HAVEN deathtrap. Her parents were war animals meant to attract forgotten beast, and in time Shirley and her sibblings were destined to do the same. Recent events have changed her life drastically. Shirley is now a test subject.
See, the cheetah cubs ran away after being exposed to the deadly dust. Unless I know they are non-contagious, nobody is allowed to retrieve the corpses, or pasture Shirley and her brothers. Our young heroine is so far untouched by the effects of the syndrome, but her sibblings are quickly beginning to rot away. I can't risk an infection. Not if I can avoid it. This is a great time to do some dwarven !!science!!.
Stage one, parts of the subject's skin and organs begin to rot
Stage two, the fever forces most of the blood to move toward the damage organs, inflating them. Major arteries slowly emptying.
Stage three, the subject is looking like crap. Blood has left the circulatory system entirely, leaving the subject pale. Blood is now concentrated inside the tissues, instead of inside the veins. Major organ failures all over.
Stage four: As the fever dissolve the tissues, the blood concentrated inside the cells is no longer contained, and begins to pour all over the ground. Skin and tissues no longer able to contain liquids.
Stage five, the subject slowly dies from internal drowning, brain failure and major generalised accelerated necrosys. This is the saddest and most painful death I can imagine.
Who the fuck programmed this game.
I can't wait to open the DOOMCAVE. It is filled with countless creatures sporting interesting and varied syndromes, and the place is covered in ashes. Truly, this will be an entertaining adventure.
Let's hum, let's focus on something more pleasant, shall we? Our beloved mayor has learned much from the various disasters striking her obsidian generator. She claims a mechanics workshop, and drags some rocks and gems in there, beginning a mysterious project.
I wish she'd have gone for adamantine instead. Whisperwhip now has a lot of cyan metal bars. The third floor of our vault is slowly filling up, and two proficient strand extractors are hard at work, refining the legendary ore. Adamantine artefacts and cumulated bars have increased our wealth to over 30 millions earlier this year.
The absurdly expansive gastronomy of our cooks is also inflating our wealth considerably. The specialty of Whisperwhip is forgotten beast whatever, marinated in beer, and soaked in enough syrup to mask the maddening taste of the underworld.
It's just a shame that the human's emperor got murdered on his way to taste the local cuisine. But hey, you can't have your cake and eat it without getting stabbed in the face repeatedly.
And with that, our mayor Mebzuth is done building her artefact project, a schist mechanism. She names it Slothsizzled the Lucid elder, which is a surprisingly appropriate title for her. I hope she learned much from this experience, because we still have some issues to fix...
The generator is clear of water, but someone tried to fix the problem initially by simply opening the lava floodgates. Yes, once again my plan was to hope against physics that magma would race ahead of the water and slowly cast it into obsidian, allowing us to channel it from above and disintagrate the water surplus square by square. apparently misplaced hope is now the core of magma physics, who knew. After this initial mistake, someone tried to dig out the obsidian blocking the floodgate, resulting in an obsidian boulder jamming the floodgate open. Magma quickly fills up the generator.
We'll just dig above the pool, drop some buckets of water down there, and block the lava flow with obsidian. Then we can repair and unjam the gates, and channel the new obsidian seal from above. Sadly, water evaporates before it can do anything. I scrap the idea.
My third idea is to actually remember I have installed a safety backup set of gates when the generator was first built. Don't ask why i didn't think of this earlier. With the push of a lever, the volcano is sealed. All we have to do now is let the magma leak into the overflow chamber and it'll dry up. Too bad the overflow bridge isn't magma safe, and the mechanisms melt instantly once magma flows through it. Man, magma is
hard.
Fuck engineering. I need a break. Ah, a werewolf, excellent. Werebeasts and demons, I understand. you just have to kill them hard enough. ber the sworddwarf understands this as well, and cleaves the creature in various bits before slicing it in half with her steel blade. He earns the title of Wolfcleaver in the process.
Days later, the fortress attracts more strange creatures. this time, it's a pair of forgotten beast. The former is using deadly dust, but enters through the DOOMCAVE. The second puts HAVEN at risk, a strange gigantic alligator emanating toxic secretions. The trap won't work here. One, we haven,t pastured animals there yet after Shirley's family issues. second, the area is still innaccessible because of the awkward ramp placement. Third, the deathtrap isn't reloaded yet. It has been merely a month and a half since Om Liceugly the Fatal Grave began its assault, after all. I have a plan, but we'll need time for the whole army to mobilise.
Oh hi, Shirley! You are exactly the distraction we need right now. Can you look as delicious as possible for a few minutes? Thanks!
The alligator gives chase, while a child deconstruct the backdoor entrance to HAVEN. This was initially a native silver vein that we mined. It was blocked, but still serves as a maintenance tunnel into the caverns when trouble arises, connecting to a stairwell dug into a stone pillar. Fortunately for us, it is naturally straight and quite long.
Shirley and the alligator have a small skirmish, but don't worry the cheetah cub is totally fine and alive. Once the wall is deconstructed, our gigantic foe abandons the (totally alive and healthy) Shirley, and begins climbing the backdoor staircase. The troops are waiting, crossbows ready. Before the beast can react, some dwarves charge it, while the rest unleash a splendid volley of bolts, inflicting various injuries. Leading the charge is ber the Wolfcleaver.
Time is of the essence. If the beast is able to recover from this initial onslaught, it will unleash its special weapon, noxious secretions. The tropps give it no quarter, striking severe blows and critical shots at the alligator. Before the creature can catch its breath, Kogsak herself raises Smoothbaner the Patterned Dish and severs the monster in half.
The legendary adamantine battle axe has a new mistress.
Also, wow crocodiles have a fuckton of fangs.
Before the maintenance tunnel is barricaded once more, I have a few jobs for the dwarves. Retrieving various corpses, and repairing the main entrance, among other things.
I don't want the haulers to bring all the rocks upstairs, then carry them back up to rebuild the deathtrap. Instead, I turn an old set of exploratory tunnels into a decent-looking stockpile area, from wich we can swiftly reload the contraption one floor above.
The area is excavated, and the leftover rocks are used to reload our deathtrap as quickly as possible. In the meantime, one of the peasants-turned-mechanics during the Tearchance incident entered a mood, and created an adamantine grate. The item is worth everything ever imagined twice.
The creatures of the underworld are restless. a new foe appears, powered by deadly dust.
I take a look at the deathtrap. It isn't fully completed, but this will do. Our newest legendary mechanic did a very good job of wiring up the machine rapidly. I order the support floor tile removed. This will be tight. The animal trainers are still pasturing the last bait animals. Just like the crocodile, this will require a distraction.
Thob Problemflags is a legendary metalsmith returning from the adamantine mines. He was diligent enough to move leftover stones in the mine back to the fresh stone stockpile. for the fortress, it means precious minutes of extra labor. For the dedicated smith, it means death. Thob, I am so sorry.
The creature is too fast, and too close. Even if Thob was to escape it, there is no safe way of closing the bridges between the hunter and the prey. We cannot risk a cloud of deadly dust in the main staircase during peak hours, nor can we let a dwarf infected by deadly dust in. The cavern is full of open space, and Thob won't be able to escape the clouds for long. The smith is thirsty and drowsy after his long trek into the mines.
One mistep is all it takes. The cloud of dust touches Thob by a mere inch. It is all it takes. Deadly changes begin to shake the smith's body.
Thob knows what to do. He declares himself a soldier in his last moments.
Thob defeated a troll once, when the enemy infiltrated our defences decades ago. He will not go down fleeing and rotting away. He grabs his pick, and turns around. The cloud fills up with miasma and blood, then slowly disperses. I choose to believe Thob fought bravely.
His sacrifice will not be in vain. Shasttol's rampage ends here, before the golden bridge, for the dwarves too have a deadly dust of their own.
On the surface, dwarven merchants depart from their yearly trade, stepping over a mountain of freshly slaughtered goblins. They smile at the bloodied savannah, unaware of the disasters that almost took place in the depths during their stay.
As they leave, a child emerges from the workshops, displaying our newest artefact, some useless wooden thing. I almost discard the thing with the rest when the artwork on this ring catches my attention. Mebzuth Keyarrow is making a plaintive gesture as she is removed from her position as outpost liason for the citadel of clutches. This happened in the later part of the year 97, when the first dwarven caravan visited Whisperwhip. Mebzuth Keyarrow. This name...
The mayor. The mayor's last name is Keyarrow. For countless years she has been the outpost liaison for our civilisation, until her first unsuccessful journey to Whisperwhip. At her arrival, the dwarves had abandoned the initial settlement, fortifying themselves higher in the mountain. Whatever Mebzuth reported back at the capital displeased the ruleing council greatly, and she was stripped of her noble position. Three years later, she was exled to the colony that caused her downfall. Suddenly, the mayor's story makes sense. Her experience as a diplomat got her elected, but to her, Whisperwhip is and will always be the cause of her fall from grace. No wonder she gives zero fucks about her office or responsibilities. To her, the title must feel like an ironic punishment, rather than an honor.
Looking back, I remember that the mayor took over engineering and mechanics when Dumat Constructmirrored asked her to help with a device to flood the fortress with magma. Is this what she has been slowly working toward? Is the mayor secretly planing to obliterate the fortress with some sort of complex device? I can't help but wonder if the various fallbacks of the obsidian generator are her doing, a way for her to get back at the fortress in petty ways. Regardless of her goals, the generator is once again back online after two disastrous years.
Other projects also see completion around this time. For one, the silver 3x3 staircase now goes all the way back to the bottom of the mine that birthed it.
Next, we've added a maintenance staircase to HAVEN's entrance, as the ramps explode with every deathtrap activation. It can only be used when the golden bridge is lowered.
Finally, this outdoor ammo stockpile improved our thief-slaying efforts considerably. Captain Ushtuth emptied a quiver on a kobold, grabbed more bolts from the pile, and finished the quarry. The leader of the True Handles is now a legendary marksdwarf. Yes!
Not all dwarves are satisfied with those changes. Morul the mechanic is miserable, because all his friends have died over the years and he doesn't have pants. He refuses to grab pants during Clothsgiving because he's miserable. Help yourself, girl. I order about 60 more trousers hoping she,ll grab one of them.
Hey look Morul, more pants!
Nope, she's too busy tantrumming.
There are more important dwarves to take care of, anyway. While overseeing the adamantine spire, I realised something important: each layer is accessed from a single tiny tunnel, and could easily be sealed off. with a single block, each layer of the adamantine spire could be converted into a grandiose tomb for the royal family. Each one a unique room, with hectic designs created by the cyan tendrils. I order our worksforce to smooth and engrave the adamantine spire immediately
Note: after much research, adamantine doesn't really improve the value of the room. A masterwork engraving is 120, a constructed/smoothed wall is like 2 to 8. That means that there isn't really any difference in value between a granite and adamantine room, despite what I was led to believe. I don,t care, this is a badass idea and we are rolling with it. In time, I hope, generations of the new royal bloodline will each have a unique tomb deep within the earth, level upon level of dwarves resting peacefully. right next to them, a hollow tube filled with demons and horrors from the underworld, from which they are miraculously sheltered from. A great symbol for the monarchs of this fortress, if there ever was any.
More pants arrive in Whisperwhip, ready to find new owners. Morul the mechanic will not be one such owner, sadly. She is found dead, dehydrated. at first i assume she went mad and let herself die. The truth is far more... ironic.
Morul, in her fury, trashed part of the bridge she was on. She fell in the pit, and slowly died there as a result of her shifting moods. I order a floor built over the broken bridge, because I'm lazy.
Also, someone made an adamantine crossbow. It is decorated with adamantine cabochons, spikes of raw adamantine, and pictures of an adamantine grate in... silk. Riiight. It will make for a terrible bashing weapon, but act as a very light item for any ranged dwarf. Since all our soldiers are both marksdwarves and melee fighter, I let people decide who will wield Vesselscribes on their own.
New target practice, people! Perfect timing. The soldiers station themselves down in the caverns, and wait for the flying megabeast to close in on their position. Sadly, the deathtrap is still unfinished. we'll have to take this one down ourselves. The plan is to stash the soldiers near a giant open area, and shoot the creature as it flies over the cavern floor. Damaging the creature will force it to plummet down and hopefully die, before it can come into melee range and use noxious vapors.
Dwarves are... not really good at following plans.
Zulban, Knight of the Citadel and sister to the queen, wanted to show off, and let the creature move next to her before attacking. Everyone sort of let this happen instead of shooting. After the battle, she and her friend Tun experience some mild symptoms, and check in at the hospital. After a few days, Tun announces that she is now fine, and go back to her room to chill. I watch patiently as Zulban slowly recovers. She is a tough dwarf... Tougher than Tun, in fact, so her recovery is imminent.
Or so I believed. After a week, Zulban's lungs give in to the infection, and she dies a slow and miserable death in her hospital bed.
To my chagrin, Zulban's corpse is carried to the military crypts; I couldn't finish any of the royal tombs in time. As she is laid to rest, her squadmates recall the list of her kills: Eighty notable kills, including a rock and two forgotten beast, the last of which got the best of her. Zulban has been in the army for over 40 years, outliving any of her allies save for Rovod, the half-alive champion. The Knight of the Citadel has lived through he great wars, the end of the civil war, and countless sieges. She has withnessed the death of more megabeasts than the world knows of. She has fought alongside all the great heroes, from Princess Asmel and her brother, to the Bronze general, without forgetting the Orions, Immortal-D and so many more. And now, her watch is ended.
Her death affects me in ways i cannot describe. How could a toughened dwarf such as she fall prey to this syndrome, when Tun the soldier/strand extractor got over it so quickly? has our medical staff failed her, focusing on a lesser dwarf when Zulban needed their help?
The truth is revealed shortly after. Zulban never stood a chance. Tun claimed to be fine, but never made it to his room, dying on his doorstep. His body has just been found, missing for a week.
A commemorative feast is organised by the queen, to honor her dead sister, killed on duty. The vanquished foe Aco cannot be cooked, for it is made of gems, but plenty more forgotten beasts were destroyed during the year. they are doused in syrup and beer, and served to the whole fort. In fact, forgotten beast roast is all that's coming out of the kitchen nowadays. The cook admit that the Whisperwhip no longer has any plants, nor meat, for it has all been cooked into fabulous meals. All that's left in the pantry, beside prepared meals worth a galaxy, are beer and syrup.
And without plants, beer too is slowly on the decline.
I kinda like the idea of eating nothing but forgotten beast marinated in sugar and beer, so I put the pre-designed farms to use. We'll be making just enough plump helmets to keep the booze stockpile afloat. Potash and skilled farmers should be able to produce enough with those little plots to sustain the fortress. We have 4000 units of syrup, and we need two to make a stack of 350 forgotten roast, so we'll be good on that front i think. I want nothing but the roasted corpses of nightmare monsters in our cellar. The 50 year anniversary of Whisperwhip approaches, and we will feast to our succes...
First, bait. We have animals, but we also have a thousand querns. The magma-proof ones we can't dump, so we'll use as scratching poles for oversized demons. I have like half a hundred of them installed in the traps for good measure.
Next, a grand project begins. To use the spire as a resting district for the royals, it must first be sealed from the caverns. Silver bars are hauled down to make walls. Miner create new tunnels. Woodcutters clear paths. Idlers carry things back inside. We are truly vulnerable at this time, for many of the workers are exposed in the caverns.
Using the trap as a gateway would be counter-productive. A new tunnel will be dug, connecting to the entrance of HAVEN from the east.
Even more workers join the project, retrieving enough adamantine to fill the third level of the vault. Over 700 bars will soon be stockpiled under the forge. The engravers smooth and decorate the leftover stone, creating what will be the first of the royal mausoleums.
Masons have been building the walls around the digsite in their free time over the years. they are now ready to create a dome that will seal the adamantine spire from the third cavern layer.
Why there are pools of pig blood scattered across the project site, I don't even dare to ask.
Shorast the child enters a mood, inspired by all the activity. She gathers a forgotten beast shell, then stops. We have everything she needs, but she'l grab none of them. I produce spare copies of the item she asks, even going so far as making weird pewter bars and adamantine cut gems to fit her preferences. Still, she refuses to obtain anything new. She will go mad, I fear.
The vault filled, i send the miners to dig silver (we ran out) and marble. to avoid pointless zig-zaggy corridors, I create a more stylish excavation zone under HAVEN's hall. In time, we can reuse this area to create something, like maybe a quern hall or a statue garden. Who knows.
Finally, the main course arrives. A giant plated flying spider with a poisonous sting. It can go anywhere, it is highly resilient, and it can trap anything in its webs then infect them with its syndrome without meeting any resistance. we could activate the machine for skypigs. We won't. This is a special date for Whisperwhip. It deserves a special foe. I order the troops downstairs...
Oh and also the duke is chillin in the trap. There's also that. He's protesting against the installation of querns inside this device, I bet. Tun, get the
fuck out now.
The beast is quick as lightning. it flies around the underground lake, up over the trap, and begins to fill the enclave with webs, eating the war lions and wardogs one by one. Have fun, absolutely oversized and terrifying spider, soon
you will be the meal. Commander Bembul informs our armorer that now is not a good time to retrieve the corpses of our fallen.
The beast is distracted, flying one urist over the machine for skypigs. the perfect angle. the troops move a bit further, still on station, and unleash a first volley of bolts. People all over the thread have stated that dwarves cannot be both ranged and melee. They can't do it, they say. Today we prove them wrong. True Handles, Gracious Flights, Joyous Orbs, fire at will!!
Ok, that's... bad. We can do better. Hurry before the beast gets bored of the pets. Or, yaknow, murders them all.
The spider eats a dog, and in the process a great shot right in the left wing.
One marksdwarf in particular is lining perfect shots. the spider's cephalothorax is injured, mixing strange ichor with webs and wardog blood down in the trap.
The dwarves reload. The beast is now enraged, and grows tired of the dogs. It stares at the soldiers further down below...
...exposing its heart to our snipers. The beast flinches.
In a great display of disregarding physics, our marksdwarf of the day lines up a shot againsts the stunned spider and sends a gigantic wing flying upward into the trap's stone catwalks. The monster falls to the ground with great tremors, sending the second wing falling away.
The beast is faint. The massive body took a beating while falling down, and now the crushed arachnid parts are leaking strange blood all over. the dwarves ponder their next move. Should they go around and finish the creature off before it heals? It doesn't matter. Our foe is soon vanquished, bleeding out from the fall. a shame this tactic could not be applied earlier, to save poor Zulban.
The terrific shots are credited to Ushtuth's cousin, Nish, who receives the nickname of Wingless Nish.
The two wings have been flinged in different directions. One landed in an unreachable part of the trap, the other lays at the bottom of the contraption. The creature will be filled with beer, roasted and served with syrup. the wings, i decide, shall remain there as a monument to this important victory.
As the latest forgotten beast bleeds out in the caverns, the calendar switches over to a new, important date. It is the first of granite, 147. Exactly half-a century ago, on this very day, Whisperwhip was founded. Dumat construcmirrored moved to this strange savvanah to found a shaky colony, mislead by a power-hungry queen. With this latest kill, the dwarves of the Citadel of Clutches have vanquished
exactly ten percent of the world's terrifying forgotten beasts. This is only the beginning...
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